A Quick Look at Indie VS Trad Publishing

I have a guest piece up now at Tobin Elliott's Blog.  In it, I discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of Indie VS Traditional Publishing. 

I consider various points such as release dates, creative control and distribution. 

Read the whole article HERE. 

Author Emily Hill Offers Ten Great Tips for Indie Writers

For quite a while now I've wanted to inventory what I have learned from the efforts of being an IndieAuthor over the past four years. So I am grateful for Jill’s generosity and hope that my guest blog will save you time and frustration as you journey down your own path as an Indie.

"Ten Things to Know About IndiePub"

One.  Readers want to be able to ‘escape’ on multiple levels into the world you’ve created for them through your fiction.  That means using music scores, book trailers and other audio and visual aids that brings your story to life for them.  [for this purpose I use Pinterest, YouTube, FlipSnack, and scoredwebsites.]

You will see a lot of innovative, energetic authors trying new software, programs, events and

activities to promote their books.  Don’t dismiss ANY of them.  Do what you, as a writer, do best: Be curious.  Get behind the scenes and ask, “How did they do that?” even if their book is on a topic that might not interest you – how they got your attention should!

Two.  Readers will want to be friends with you.  Use social networking-engagement to check in on the welfare and activities of your readers.  Be reciprocal, not egotistical!

Three.  Your REAL personality should match your social networking, and blogging personality; and all messages should come close to matching your genre.  Imagine Marilyn Monroe, with her baby talk voice, being the author of an academic tome on physics.  It wouldn’t work unless Einstein was at her side egging her on.  Stay True To You. Caveat: Unless you’re John Locke (a husband and father) egging women readers on as Donovan Creed. If it’s your character’s personae you can point your finger at . . . have fun!

Four.  Never publish an ebook title that you have not word-for-word edited ON PAPER. Editing solely from a computer screen is begging for trouble. I am publishing a book soon that I printed out and realized that I had pasted Chapter Ten into the eManuscript twice. Yikes!

As excited as you are to get your work out to your readers, proceeding ploddingly slowly and doing it right is better than slapping-up and realizing too late that your work is fraught with mistakes like using ‘the’ where it should read ‘they’.

Five.  Buying advertising does NOT work on ANY level effectively enough to invest more than token pennies on ads, and only if your most ardent backer is offering a ‘deal’.  Personal relationships, and recommendations, equate directly to book sales.  Build your tribe. Caveat: If you MUST, the ‘best’ deal for book release advertising is BookBuzzr, Goodreads, and Facebook. But reciprocal blog tours are the friendliest way to share your book news, in my opinion.

Six.  LIKE your Readers.  Really. Like. Them.  Write in a genre, or on a topic, that interests you enough personally that it is ‘a natural’ to engage via Facebook, Twitter, and through your blog with the people who also like your topic.  One big reason I left Confederate history behind and moved into the supernatural genre is because it was such a better fit for me personally.  I’m proud of my debut [Civil War] novel, but it’s easier to move in and out of the supernatural genre, because it’s a topic that is second nature to me.

Seven.  Be as professional as you can afford to be.  For each of your titles project/pencil out what you believe your first-year royalty income will be, based on your commitment to carve out time for book marketing.  Then, spend 10% of that royalty projection on a) cover design; b) professional editing; and c) ads/book trailers (I use iStock for my photos, videos, and scores). 

For instance: If you think your ebook should earn $6,000 the first year compute thusly e.g. $6000 minus the ‘royalty split’ to distribution vendors Kindle, Nook, Smashwords = $1800 [your NET is $4200]. Therefore, my recommendation is that authors spend $420 on production costs netting, after aggressive marketing, a ‘take’ of $3780 the first year.  Work out YOUR formula and stay loyal to it.  Scrimping on production in these competitive times is going to make the contrast between your DIY eBook and professional authors coming over to IndiePub even more stark.

Eight.  Be a Mentor to emerging IndieAuthors.  It’s karma. 

Nine.  The *-one-star.   Now that you are ‘in the biz’ don’t ever, EVER *-one-star a book.  And don’t ‘go after’ or ‘stalk’ a *-one-star reviewer who duns you.  Once you become an author, you give up the delight of dive-bombing a book with your skanky one-star.  A lot of authors do the ‘genealogy’ on one-stars and are able to discover authors who have hired guns shooting down the competition. I guarantee, word WILL get out.

Ten.  The Orphanage.  Don’t leave any orphans on the ‘sales line’.  I cannot even begin to count the number of books that are Indie Pub’bed and then never marketed.  If you’re not going to put forth a respectable marketing effort for your books, take them down.  If you’re leaving the pub scene, even for a number of months, ‘unpublish’ your eBooks; let them cool off and come back with a new product description, a fresh eBook cover, something that rejuvenates your efforts.

Wishing You Each ‘The Best’ that the literary world has to offer!

*  *  *

Emily Hill writes in the Supernatural genre and publishes her paperbacks and eBooks on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.  Visit her website located at: http://www.emilyhillwriter.com/

Emily’s latest eBook:  Voodoo Vision: New Orleans House of Spirits, a 2012 NaNoWriMo winner, is now available on Kindle US  Kindle UK, and Smashwords

Follow her on Twitter @24GhostTales 

Avoid Rejection Letters… An Editor's Check List by Dee Lloyd

AVOID REJECTION LETTERS… AN EDITOR’S CHECK LIST

By DEE LLOYD

During my six years as Acquisitions Editor for the now-defunct LTDBooks I must have read several thousand submissions. Many of the manuscripts I reluctantly had to reject had much to offer. If the authors had looked carefully at the following aspects of their writing, my response might have been more positive.

Here are some of my pet peeves. I address many of them in my October course PUTTING THE SUSPENSE IN ROMANTIC SUSPENSE at Savvy Authors www.savvyauthors.com .

THE CHECK LIST:

1.    Spelling and grammar. There is no more obvious fault to an editor than poor grammar and spelling. No matter how intriguing your opening scene is, faulty sentence structure and spelling errors will influence the editor’s decision. Even if you are confident about your writing skills, it is wise to have a knowledgeable person do a careful read through. Don’t rely solely on spell check. It will accept “There”, “their” and “they’re” because they are all properly spelled. Their meanings are totally different and their improper use is jarring.

2.    Compelling opening. Too much background information slows the beginning of your story. This is my most frequent reason to reject a novel. Save the backstory for the moment that you need it. The reader loses interest in long introductory paragraphs where the setting is lovingly set out and the characters' backgrounds are given in detail.

3.    Believable characters. Know your characters in depth. Show me who the character is by how she behaves in a real, compelling situation. Don't tell me she has been hurt in the past. Show me how she overreacts now. Explain later, much later. (Perhaps at a point when she has to explain her actions to someone.)

4.    Natural dialogue. Read your dialogue aloud. Make sure that each character has his or her own voice. The professor doesn't use the same language or have the same rhythm to her speech as the man who is repairing her roof. (If he does have the same kind of vocabulary, there had better be an explanation for that.)

5.    Essential characters only. I always remember Timothy Findley saying in an article for students of creative writing, "Be prepared to kill your darlings." Of course he was talking not only about editing out characters but about cutting delightful, poetic descriptions that might not be appropriate to the story you are telling.

6.    Point of view. Beware of having a character describe herself in a scene that is written from her point of view.

      

      "How could he sit there cheerfully filling his face when he had just destroyed her world? Marcie blinked back the tears that were threatening to fill her sea-green eyes. Her waist-length, chestnut hair swayed as she stalked up to his table. She would fix his little wagon!"

She obviously cannot see her own hair or eyes. In this example, the reader is jerked out of Marcie’s mind for the description, then back into it. Don’t lose the reader/character connection.

7.    Length of sentences. Don’t write too many long sentences. I have no objection to long sentences; however, in this day of dedicated ereaders and smaller screens, I have found that they can lose their effectiveness. When I started to read on my first electronic hand-held device several years ago, I noticed that shorter sentences had more punch. Be careful though that you don't fall into the trap of beginning each short sentence with the subject. Sentence fragments must be used even more judiciously because the shorter page makes everything more obvious.

8.    Similarity in character names. I got myself into a bind by being too cute about the names of a couple of gorgeous twins in CHANGE OF PLANS. Calling them Bret and Bart was funny, I thought, for a couple of secondary characters. However, when I had some requests for a story for Bret, and wrote GHOST OF A CHANCE, I was stuck with the names. And it wasn't easy to prevent confusion. Then Bart got his story in UNQUIET SPIRITS! Be careful.

9.    Word count. This is more important in a print book than in an ebook. In an ebook, the prescribed length of the manuscript is the length of the story. However, be aware that many publishers release ebook and print simultaneously.Before submitting to any publishing house read the guidelines carefully and follow them. Each publisher posts guidelines on its website.

10. Pace. Your text must be tight and move along. No reader will tolerate an author wallowing in description or in long unnecessary philosophic dissertation. Nothing puts a reader (or this editor) off faster than a sermon or a political statement passed off as a novel.

These are the most common areas for rejection. I deal with them in depth in my Romantic Suspense course (October 7 – 27).

My best advice is to read what the publishing house you are targeting has already released. Each house has a style and a tone which is hard to describe. Make sure your story fits that style.

Good luck with your writing career!

Dee Lloyd www.deelloyd.com

Get Dee's books from AMAZON - click HERE

Learning about your industry or trade...

When I go to events (store signings and such) I frequently get asked about HOW TO BECOME A WRITER.

I truly do not mind helping another writer or giving advice to someone who has a dream of being a writer someday.  I will occasionally look at an aspiring writer's work and give them feedback.  What astonishes me is how few people put the effort in to actually learning about their desired profession.  It's like:

• an aspiring lawyer not learning about the LSAT exams
• a travel agent with no idea about world capitals
• a nurse who gets nauseous at the sight of blood
• a cop who has poor marksmanship
• a veterinarian with allergies to cats and dogs

Anyone wanting to pursue the above professions should polish the things required to become or the be a good member of a given profession (study a map, go to a firing range).  It's also good to rule out certain professions if you don't have the right aptitude or attitude for it (a queasy nurse, a vet with allergies).

It's smart to find out the what's and why's and how's of a given profession before deciding to follow that certain path.  For example,

• an electrician must do an apprenticeship before becoming a journeyman
• a physician must do a residency
• an actor/singer/dancer has to go to auditions, many of which will not be successful
• a lawyer must article for a year
• a bartender should know the recipes for a few popular cocktails

And so on...

With the Internet, all of this information is there for the taking.  Yet people don't bother to check into it, thus putting themselves at a disadvantage.

I would be happy to help someone polish a synopsis or fine-tune a query letter, but you should know what those things are.  I don't think it's up to me to give quickie workshops on what a  query letter is, or why you need to have a zingy synopsis.

People ask me where they can SNAIL MAIL their whole manuscript.  Asking that question shows me the person has spent ZERO time investigating writing as a profession.  Shame on you! For the record, there are many good reasons why an agent or publisher does not want to receive the entire text - all 422 pages - of an unsolicited manuscript:

• they don't have time to read that many submissions
• a manuscript takes up space
• worries about accusations of plagiarism/intellectual property
• they aren't taking on new clients
• it wastes paper and is not environmentally friendly
• if sent via email, well, SPAM SPAM SPAM and viruses

There are tons of books out there on how to get published.  And there are lots of books out there on how to write.  These are two different subjects.  I'll talk more about writing in another post, but for now, the best book on getting published is:

78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might by Pat Walsh.

There are lots of other books out there as well - some of them are great - but in my opinion, the Walsh book was the VERY BEST.  Damn I learned a lot from reading it!

Mark Bourrie "An Author's Hellish Ordeal" ... Indeed!

Wow!  Just came across this article on Facebook and I must comment on it and share it.  The title of the piece, found on Huffington Post, written by Mark Bourrie, is "Book Publishing: An Author's Hellish Ordeal." 

Mark's journey was indeed hellish, much more hellish than others, but he notes that for any author, the book biz is anything but a cakewalk.  As Mark says:

"The more I write books and promote them, the more likely I am to end up on the dole. Very, very few people in Canada make a living from writing books. I hope to, but the chances are slim to none."



Mark's book The Fog of War: Censorship of Canada's Media in World War Two is available at Chapters and Indigo .

Read Mark's bio here.

https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/book-publishing-an-authors-hellish-ordeal_b_918218